The “New Obama”: Michelle Keeps Hope Alive

The climax of the first night of the Democratic National Convention was billed as an opportunity for Americans to meet the new Obama—a Hispanic Obama, Julián Castro, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of San Antonio—and for the First Lady, Michelle Obama, to say some nice words about the old Obama, the rapidly graying one who is running roughly even in the polls with a stuffed shirt called Mitt Romney.

It didn’t work out like that. Castro, after a slow start, got off some choice shots at the Mittster, and generally gave a good account of himself, but the First Lady, in a bravura performance, completely overshadowed him. Combining personal testimonials (“I love my husband even more than I did four years ago”) with behind-the-scenes details from the White House (the President “strategizing over middle-school friendships” with his daughters) and Reaganesque rhetoric (“never forget that doing the impossible is the history of this nation”), she threw off the cloak of domesticity that she has been wearing for the past three and a half years and emerged as a major figure in her own right. By the end of her speech, Twitter was full of speculation about her running for President someday, though Jodi Kantor, who wrote a book about the Obamas, said that it would never happen: if Michelle ran for office, Kantor said, she would eat her book.

There’s nothing like a story-starved press pack to get ahead of itself. For now, let us simply state the obvious: Michelle Obama gave a speech that her husband, the speechifier, would have been proud of. After a night of enthusiastic but predictable denunciations of Romney’s Swiss bank accounts and laudations for Obama’s decision to save the auto industry, end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and pass universal health care, she lit up the Time Warner Cable Arena, home to the Charlotte Bobcats. When she left the stage, many people in the audience were calling for an encore, and so, surely, were her husband and daughters, who were watching her on television from the White House.

Inevitably, comparisons will be made with Ann Romney’s speech in Tampa last week. Facing the tough task of humanizing a financial engineer who made hundreds of millions of dollars by piling debt on companies and wringing efficiencies from their operations, Ms. Romney performed admirably. But Ms. Obama outdid her. In part, that was because her speech, which she apparently worked on with a speechwriter for weeks, was superior.

Beginning by offering praise for the many outstanding Americans, particularly military veterans and their families, she has met during the past four years, she arced through her personal history with Obama, her initial reluctance to move to Washington, the hard-working father who inspired her, the hard-working grandmother who inspired her husband, and finally back to the life she and her husband have led in the White House, where, “He didn’t care whether it was the easy thing to do politically—that’s not how he was raised—he cared that it was the right thing to do.”

It wasn’t just a good speech, it was a dramatic performance. Clad in a very pretty pink and silver dress designed by Tracy Reese, which showed off her well-toned arms, she appeared on the bright blue stage to a two-minute standing ovation. After a couple of early stammers, which some folks on Twitter suggested were strictly for effect, she spoke seamlessly and flawlessly. Although she was standing in front of a teleprompter, she had clearly memorized the speech to the point where she appeared to be speaking spontaneously.

I thought the best bit came when she talked about the values their parents and grandparents had imbued in her and Barack. She retold the story of her father, who defied multiple sclerosis to get up at dawn each day and work at a city water plant, where he earned enough to help pay for his share (after financial aid and loans) of his children’s college-tuition fees.

And every semester, he was determined to pay that bill right on time, even taking out loans when he fell short. He was so proud to be sending his kids to college … and he made sure we never missed a registration deadline because his check was late. You see, for my dad, that’s what it meant to be a man. Like so many of us, that was the measure of his success in life—being able to earn a decent living that allowed him to support his family. And as I got to know Barack, I realized that even though he’d grown up all the way across the country, he’d been brought up just like me.

It was powerful stuff, and it didn’t stop there. She went on:

We learned about dignity and decency—that how hard you work matters more than how much you make…. That helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself. We learned about honesty and integrity—that the truth matters…. That you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules … and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square. We learned about gratitude and humility—that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean…. And we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

Those are the values Barack and I—and so many of you—are trying to pass on to our own children. That’s who we are.

In the final part of the speech, she drew the threads together, insisting that her husband, in fighting for things like equal pay for women, universal health care, and a thriving auto industry, was simply doing what he had always done.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it … and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are, or where we’re from, or what we look like, or who we love. And he believes that when you’ve worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity…you do not slam it shut behind you…. You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.

So when people ask me whether being in the White House has changed my husband, I can honestly say that when it comes to his character, and his convictions, and his heart, Barack Obama is still the same man I fell in love with all those years ago. He’s the same man who started his career by turning down high-paying jobs and instead working in struggling neighborhoods where a steel plant had shut down, fighting to rebuild those communities and get folks back to work…. Because for Barack, success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.

If that last line was an indirect jab at her husband’s opponent, it was about the only one in the speech. Rather than trying to tear down Romney and the G.O.P., she tried to elevate her husband and his works, assuring disappointed Democrats and independents that, she, for one, still had faith in him. Obviously, it was a one-sided speech. She glossed over Obama’s comfortable upbringing in Hawaii, failed to mention his role in bailing out Wall Street banks, and didn’t mention the housing crisis, the soaring deficit, or the fall in median income. But that was hardly her role. She came to bolster Obama, and in doing so she demonstrated that effective speeches don’t have to be full of attack lines. Direct statements, sincere expressions of personal feeling, and a bit of poetry can do the job just as well.

So, let us praise Michelle Obama, a tall, glamorous, intelligent, and strong-minded daughter of the Windy City who finally came into her own, without any apologies or histrionics. She may well be sincere when she says that she has no political ambitions of her own. But after Tuesday evening, the option will always be there.

I’ve updated this post to take account of reports that Michelle Obama worked on the speech for weeks with a speechwriter. Originally I said that the speech “presumably was written for her.” Sorry for the error.